Scholarships

Summary By Kelly Ledbetter [Cont.]

 

A Typical Day

[The Wake Up Call]
Although nobody who knows me would call me a morning person, my typical day in Nepal would begin around 5:30a.m. This early start was due to the fact that on every morning of August and most of September, a procession of Buddhists would make a pilgrimage to nearby holy shrines and temples at sunrise. These processions were always accompanied by musicians who played horns and drums and were impossible to ignore. In case I fell back asleep, the yoga center nearby also started around 5:30a.m. I typically thought of yoga as a quiet way to meditate and stretch, but this center believed in starting the class by laughing at the top of their lungs, including the leader who used a megaphone. The result was an unsettling laughter that lasted for about two minutes. Needless to say, I did not need an alarm clock for the entire visit, and when I return I will not disregard the earplugs recommended by Lonely Planet.

 

[Traveling To The Hospital]
The head of our host family, Lok, told all of us (even us girls) that going to the yoga center would make us more virile, but most of the time we opted to do yoga on the roof at 6:00a.m., a much more humane hour. After an invigorating stretch, we would take a gamble with the showers (sometimes nice and toasty, sometimes freezing). Then we'd dig into a delicious meal of french toast and banana lassi or tea before setting off for the hospital. HRDC was up a mini-mountain, and it would take about 40 to 45 minutes to walk there depending on the weather. The monsoons lasted unseasonably long the year I visited, so we sometimes had to wade through flooded roads to reach the hospital. More than one volunteer was leeched along the way, but I was always spared, despite once losing a flip-flop in the river. Because the one paved road, the 'highway' where cars can go a speedy 25kph, was quite polluted, we frequently took back roads and trapezed through the rice paddies. Once we crossed the 'highway,' we went through what we called 'Barnyard Alley,' where goats, chickens, children, cows, and ducks ran loose. From there, we would walk single-file on narrow paths through the bright-green rice fields and then slowly hike up the terraced mountain. Each morning, we would pass children in uniforms going to school. At first they seemed quite shy, shouting hello and asking our names only once we had passed them. But after talking with them over several days, they began to bring us flowers and perform traditional Nepali dances for us, making us feel much more welcome in the community.

 

[After Volunteering]
We would stay at the hospital until about 4:00p.m. in the afternoon and then head back down the mountain to do e-mail or whatever else occupied us until 7:00p.m., when we would eat a dinner of dhal bhat, a meal of rice and lentils with sides of potatoes and other vegetable curries. While everything pretty much closes down and the streets become abandoned when the sun sets, some stores are open until 8:00p.m., but that's rare. So in the evening, we'd hang out, hand-wash clothes, and plan adventures for the upcoming weekend.

 

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